


Four Things That Never Happened to Cathy Gale, and One That Did

by edna_blackadder



Category: The Avengers (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-02
Updated: 2009-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 08:20:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/746364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edna_blackadder/pseuds/edna_blackadder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exactly what it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Things That Never Happened to Cathy Gale, and One That Did

**Author's Note:**

> You might want to skip over the very dark first section, but I should point out that this was actually a possible ending for ‘Lobster Quadrille.’ Also, Pearl Primus was a real African-American modern dancer and anthropologist, who struck me as someone Cathy might have known or at least admired. Also, I’m told that “Ms.” is less common in the UK than it is here, but I do think that Emma in the fourth vignette would be someone whose marital status is just confusing enough for her to prefer it. Anyway, thanks to sarcasticsra for the beta.

_4._

For a moment Cathy couldn’t believe it. _He’s lost his mind,_ she thought, frozen in shock as the houseboat rapidly caught fire. _He’s going to get us both killed._

And then Quentin grabbed hold of her and she immediately snapped out of it, seized by a sudden, frenzied survival instinct. His hands gripped her neck and she struggled to breathe, painfully aware of the flames that had already engulfed half the room. Just as they licked her boots she broke Quentin’s hold and forced him back, and he tumbled into the inferno and screamed as his body burned up like kerosene.

Quentin screamed as he lay helplessly on what had been the floor, dying in the most painful manner imaginable, and then Cathy was screaming too, because she could fight off any man or beast, but she was only human, and she could not fight the elements. There was nowhere she could run, and the blaze would consume her too. As her leathers caught fire her screams mingled with Quentin’s, and the next morning the whole boat had been reduced to ash, and Steed was left to identify two bodies floating near the pier, burnt beyond recognition.

_3._

Cathy yawned, still exhausted from jet lag. ‘What do you want, Steed?’

‘Merely to ask how you enjoyed your holiday. Oh, and I’ve brought you a welcome-home present. Here, have a look.’ Smiling, he held out an envelope.

Cathy took it, intending to give the contents only the most cursory glance before showing him out, but she was taken aback when she found herself looking at two tickets to an African dance performance by Pearl Primus. ‘Steed!’ she exclaimed. ‘This is...suspiciously kind of you.’

Steed grimaced, but recovered quickly. ‘I assure you, Mrs Gale, that there are no strings attached. I seek only the pleasure of your company.’

Cathy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Really. Just say it, Steed, just this once. If someone is out to assassinate Pearl, or if her tour manager is leaking secrets to the Soviets, just say so. Surely we must be beyond this routine by now.’

‘We are beyond it, Mrs Gale,’ Steed replied solemnly. ‘If you don’t believe me now, you’ll know Monday night.’

Monday night came and went, and Cathy had not spent such a pleasant evening in years. Pearl excelled herself onstage, and when Steed revealed that he had also used Cathy’s name in order to convince her to join them for dinner, she proved a charming and lively conversationalist. It was obvious that Steed could not keep up with their academic talk any more than he had been able to follow the actual show, but he managed to nod his head in the right places as he ordered more champagne, and by the end of the night Cathy wondered who this man was and what he had done with her partner. Only after he had politely dropped her off at her flat did she realize that she had been waiting all night for the other shoe to drop, and it had never done.

Two days later, Steed shocked Cathy still further by saying to her, directly and without any kind of preamble, ‘I need your help, my dear. We’re going after a gem smuggler.’

_2._

After her lectures at Stanford and Berkeley, Cathy was proud but exhausted, but as soon as she entered her hotel, the receptionist accosted her. ‘Catherine Gale? I’m sorry to bother you, but apparently it’s very urgent. An Englishman has been calling here all day and asking for you, and told me to have you call him back as soon as you returned, regardless of the hour.’

Cathy gritted her teeth, knowing there was only one man that could possibly be. ‘Was his name John Steed, by any chance?’

The receptionist shook her head. ‘I honestly couldn’t say. He wouldn’t tell me his name; he just kept saying it was important.’

‘All right, give me his number.’

The receptionist handed her a slip of paper. ‘There you are. Have a pleasant evening, Mrs Gale.’

Cathy thanked her, then headed for the lift. When she reached her room, she dialled the number with bitter resentment. ‘Steed here,’ came the expected reply.

‘Steed, whatever you want from me, the answer is no. I’m through with that life. I’ve moved on. In any case, I thought you had a new partner.’

‘This is no ordinary case. It’s personal, Cathy.’

Cathy drew a sharp breath at his use of her first name. ‘Personal to me?’

‘Last week, a man turned up in the middle of Trafalgar Square with no memory of the last eight years. He says he is your husband, Allen Gale.’

Cathy’s jaw dropped. ‘But—that’s—that’s—’ she stopped, sorted out her thoughts and then managed to say, her hands trembling, ‘That’s impossible. I saw him killed.’

‘You saw him shot,’ Steed corrected her, more gently than usual. ‘It’s possible that he may not have actually been killed, as the doctors told you. I went down there myself to verify it.’

Cathy let the phone drop. Furious with herself, she picked it up again and hissed, ‘You should have phoned me right away. The very minute he turned up, you should have contacted me.’

‘I know,’ said Steed gravely. ‘I’m sorry. I was afraid it might have been a cover for an attempt on your life, and that I was being used to discover your whereabouts.’

Cathy had seldom, if ever, heard John Steed apologise for anything. ‘I’ll be on the first plane tomorrow,’ she promised.

One look at the man proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was her Allen. Steed gently prodded her to ask him questions, questions only he could answer, and Mrs Peel said nothing after introducing herself, but brought them tea and watched them contemplatively. Cathy asked such questions with difficulty, and he answered them all, and as she assured Steed that somehow, impossibly, this really was Allen, she found herself overcome by rare yet irrepressible emotion.

There was still a case to solve, a dastardly plot to uncover. Steed and Mrs Peel took the lead, and Cathy assisted them as best she could, but mostly she stared at her husband when he wasn’t looking and avoided his eyes when he was, wishing that she had any idea what to say.

_1._

Cathy’s audience gave her an enthusiastic round of applause before most of them began to file out, but a few stayed behind to ask her questions. She fielded them with practiced ease until only one woman remained, sitting cross-legged in the third row. She was clad in a dark blue catsuit, and her auburn hair was swept up under a hat that no one should ever have been able to pull off. Her most distinctive feature, however, was her tired expression, which aged her otherwise beautiful face at least five years. ‘Did you have a question?’ Cathy asked, when she made no move to ask one.

‘Yes,’ the woman replied, ‘but not about your talk, though I liked it very much.’

‘Why, thank you, Ms…?’

‘Knight. Emma Knight. But you know of me as Mrs Peel.”

Cathy raised an eyebrow. ‘John Steed’s partner?’

‘Former partner, now.’

Cathy smiled. ‘I met Dr Keel once. That seems to be a familiar story.’

‘I’m told that it is,’ said Ms Knight archly, ‘but I did not leave by choice. I was wondering if I might persuade you to have a drink with me, Mrs Gale.’

‘You might. And it’s Cathy, please.’

‘Emma. Shall we?’

Cathy nodded, unsure of what was going on but willing, for the time being, to go along with it. ‘Why not?’

Cathy accepted a ride from Emma, who drove them to a swanky but quiet café. When each had a drink in hand, Emma observed, ‘You seem to have done very well in the...intervening years. Two books, an American lecture tour…’

‘You’re remarkably well-informed.’ Cathy stiffened. ‘Why are you here, Emma?’

Emma shrugged and sipped her drink, then answered simply, ‘Because I don’t know where I ought to be. It was pure coincidence that I heard about your event tonight. A friend of mine, Walter Hornby, is a fan of yours. He wanted to go himself, but he’s giving a presentation of his own in France tonight.’

Cathy perked up at the name. ‘Walter Hornby, the archaeologist?’

‘That’s the one. I told him I would go in his stead and take notes, but I really just wanted to finally meet you.’

‘Mission accomplished,’ Cathy murmured, sipping her own drink. ‘What did you mean, you don’t know where you ought to be?’

Emma sighed. ‘In the past year my entire life has been turned on its head. I was studying physics before I met him, and at the time I was perfectly happy doing that. Now I can’t imagine going back to it. Not full-time, anyway.’

Cathy sat up straighter. ‘You liked working with him, didn’t you?’

‘I loved it. I never wanted to do anything else.’

‘But then...why leave, if you enjoyed it?’

Emma laughed a bitter laugh, then replied, ‘My husband was a test pilot. He crashed over the Amazon and I spent six years believing I was a widow. Then he suddenly returned, very much alive, one year ago last month.’

‘And yet you’re not Mrs Peel anymore?’

‘No.’ A faraway, wistful expression came over her countenance. ‘I tried to be, but that ship had sailed.’

‘Emma...forgive my lack of propriety, but...were you and Steed…’ Cathy couldn’t bring herself to finish the question, but Emma could hardly mistake the implication.

‘Lovers? Yes,’ she said flatly. ‘You’re the first person to whom I’ve ever admitted it. We liked our little joke on the world.’

Cathy took a long drink, then said, ‘You’re making me frightfully jealous, you know.’

‘Oh?’

‘Not of the relationship itself,’ she hastened to clarify. ‘Merely that such a relationship was possible for you. I had absolutely had it with him by the time I left.’

‘From what he told me, you had the right. But now you’re making me jealous.’

Cathy’s face coloured a little. ‘He said that?’

‘Something like it.’

‘Emma...pardon my frankness, but I think you know very well where you ought to be.’

Emma nodded. ‘I do, but it’s no longer an option.’

‘Any particular reason?’

‘She goes by the name of Tara King.’

Cathy’s eyes widened. ‘They’re not…’

‘I hope not, and not merely for my own ego. She’s awfully young.’

‘In other words, you don’t want to know.’

‘I suppose you could say that.’

‘Well,’ said Cathy thoughtfully, ‘you said you enjoyed my talk tonight? Are you really interested in anthropology, or were your notes purely for Mr Hornby’s sake?’

‘I am very interested, and I have studied a little of it over the years. My focus was always on the hard sciences, but I am interested in nearly everything.’

‘May I see the notes you took?’

‘Certainly.’ Emma reached into her bag and retrieved a notebook.

Cathy skimmed the pages indicated. Emma’s notes were nearly as clear as her own, demonstrating a superior understanding of every point she had made. She handed them back and smiled. ‘Well, Emma, if you are indeed at a crossroads, I know an anthropologist who is looking for a research collaborator.’

Emma leaned forward slightly. ‘And who might this be?’

‘Me. My next project is rather broad in scope, and also I could use the perspective of someone with expertise in carbon dating. Have you had much chemistry?’

‘Plenty for that purpose. Is this a job offer?’

‘I suppose you could say that.’

For the first time all evening, Emma smiled. ‘Very well, I accept.’

~

The house Steed and Emma had chosen was already elegant, but furnished with their belongings it was positively magnificent. Cathy shook her head. Even after all these years, sometimes it was hard for her to believe that they had become her friends, and not just friends but close friends, and that soon they would be her neighbours in Oxford, where Emma would shortly complete a degree she had started some thirty years before. ‘Do you like it?’ she asked anxiously, as the two of them gazed around their new living room.

‘It’s beautiful, Cathy,’ said Emma, turning to her and smiling brilliantly. ‘Thank you so much for all of the help you gave us. Actually—’ she broke off, nudging Steed. ‘Your moment has arrived.’

Steed cleared his throat, and Cathy looked at him curiously. ‘We have a thank-you present,’ he said, blushing uncharacteristically as he handed her an envelope.

Cathy opened it, her jaw dropping as she read the letter from the university. ‘Steed, you shouldn’t have. It’s far too much—’

‘Do you like it?’ he asked, cutting off her protest.

Cathy’s mind was reeling. Steed had donated a truly unprecedented amount of money to the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, and he had done it in her husband’s name. The long-awaited new building would be called the Allen and Catherine Gale Centre.

‘I love it,’ she managed to say, ‘but it’s far too much. All I did was help you house hunt.’

‘Over the years,’ he said heavily, ‘you’ve done much more than that. This is the least we can do.’

Cathy smiled. ‘Thank you, Steed.’


End file.
